Cassava recipes

• 1 kg cassava roots(fresh)
• 3 coconuts(grated)
• ¼ tbsp Illiki(cardamom)

Peel cassava, wash and cut into short longitudinal pieces and remove the pith.

Boil cassava until almost ready.

Prepare coconut milk add add onto the boiling cassava.

Add illiki and boil until the cassava is ready.

Serve cassava with fish and kachumbari on a big platter or Swahili tray (sinia).

Giriama Kimanga cassava recipe

Ingredients

• 2 kg fresh cassava
• 1 kg cow peas
• ¼ tbsp Illiki(cardamom)

Clean and soak cow peas overnight.

Boil the cow peas.

Clean, peel the cassava and remove the pith.

Cut cassava into very small pieces or grate.

Boil the cassava and mix with the cow peas.

Mash the mixture until smooth.

Serve with Kigunda (pounded cassava leaves).

Sorghum, Cassava and Maize Ugali

Ingredients

• ½ cup sorghum flour
• ½ cup cassava flour
• 1 cup maize flour
• 3 cups water

Mix and sift the sorghum, cassava and maize flour.

Boil the water and add the flour stirring until the mixture thickens. Cover and simmer for 5 min.

Stir the mixture again until the mixture (ugali) rolls on the pot when turned.

Serve with fried fish, green vegetables or sour milk.

Sorghum - Cassava Ugali

Ingredients

• Sorghum - cassava composite flour(ratio 1:1)
• Water

Boil water in a sauce pan. Add the flour as you stir to make a stiff mixture.

Reduce the heat and continue stirring to enhance even cooking and to break up any remaining lumps of raw flour.

Serve hot with relish of your choice.

Variation

Millet flour may be used instead of sorghum.

Boiled Cassava

Ingredients

• Fresh cassava roots
• Salt
• Water

Peel the cassava. Remove the woody pith in the middle part, and cut the cassava into 3"-4" long pieces.

Boil in salted water until soft but not mashed.

Drain off the water.

Serve hot/cold as a snack or with tea, porridge or milk.

Fufu

Peeled roots after cooking by steaming or boiling are pounded and the stick dough eaten with soups made out of fish or vegetables. This is common in West Africa, Particularly in Ghana.

Mingao

This drink is prepared in the Amazon region by dissolving fermented starch in boiling water and simmering for a period. In order to mask the unpleasant taste it is flavored with palm fruits, pineapple or banana.

Dumby

This is Liberian food is prepared by placing boiled cassava tubers in a wooden mortar and beating with a heavy pestle.

In order to prevent sticking, the pestle is dipped into water. In about 45 min pounding is complete.

The Dumby is cut into pieces and put in meat or vegetable soup and then swallowed whole.

Fermented foods and drinks

Cassava forms a substrate for a wide variety of fermented foods and drinks in Africa.

As Uganda cassava beer, fermented drinks such as beiju, banu or ula and kasili are made after fermenting grated cassava.

Gari

In Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea, Benin and Togo. Gari is one of the most important food. Pulp made from cassava is placed in cloth bags or sacks made from jute and allowed to ferment for 3-10 days.

Corynebacterium manihot and Geotrichum candidum are the two organisms which help in the fermentation of cassava in two stages.

After the fermentation period, the partially dried cassava pulp is taken out and sieved to remove the fibrous materials.

It is the heated in shallow iron pans and stirred continuously until it becomes light and crisp. Palm oil can be added to prevent burning.Good quality gari is usually creamy yellow in colour with uniformity sized grains and should swell to three times its volume when placed in water.

Kapok pogari

This is mid-western Nigerian food similar to gari preparation.

The only difference is that the grated and fermented mass is not sieved before roasting.

The resultant product has bigger particles.Its consumed with fish, coconut or meat.

Chick-wangue

After removing the rind and skin, cassava is soaked in water, pounded and made into paste.The paste is sun dried or smoke dried. the wet paste is made into balls and packed in leaves on a screen over the hearth and left for 15 days.

The leaves are then removed and the black coating formed is scraped to produce flour. This food is found in several West African countries.

Meduame-M-bong

This is a preparation of Cameroon. Cassava tubers are peeled, washed and cut into large pieces and boiled for 30 min to 1 hr.

After discarding the water, the roots are cut into small pieces and soaked in running water for 12-36 h. Final product Meduame-M-bong is then eaten with meat, fish, peanuts, green leaves.

Attieke

Roots are peeled, placed in water and ground into a paste and the paste is left to ferment for 2 days in jute sacks and the pressed.

Finally the paste is removed from the sacks, crumbled by hand and steamed. the final product is eaten with milk, meat or vegetables. This is common food in Cameroon.